War rages between the Confederation and the Union. Shattered fleets watch each other warily across a war torn frontier. Both sides are licking their wounds, gathering strength to continue the fight.

Captain Tyler Barron and the crew of Dauntless are finally enjoying the rest they’ve earned while their aging battleship Dauntless gets the repairs and refit it desperately needs. But their respite will be short-lived. In the Badlands, deep in the haunted vastness of pre-Cataclysmic space, a new discovery threatens to upset the balance of power.

Orbiting a world in a distant system is an ancient battleship, vastly larger and enormously more advanced than anything possessed by the contending powers…and the Union has already sent forces to seize it. The Confederation has no ships close enough to intervene, to get there before the enemy…none save Dauntless.

Barron and his crew must race across the Badlands, find the ancient artifact, and somehow hold it, keep the Union forces from taking it, until reinforcements arrive. They will be outnumbered and outgunned, but there can be no retreat. Not this time. Nothing less than the fate of all human-inhabited space is at stake.

If the Confederation is able to rediscover the technology of the ancients, it will be safe for generations to come, its defensive forces untouchable by its enemies. But if the Union gets there first, if it can adapt the incredible power of mankind’s lost technology, it will gain the power to enslave all humanity.

This fight isn’t for territory. It isn’t for position or tactical advantage. It is for the future.

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About the Author

He currently lives in New York City and has been reading science fiction and fantasy for just about as long as he has been reading. My tastes are fairly varied and eclectic, but his favorites are military and dystopian science fiction and epic fantasy, usually a little bit gritty.

He write a lot of science fiction with military themes, but also other SF and some fantasy as well. He likes complex characters and lots of backstory and action. He thinks world-building is the heart of science fiction and fantasy, and since that is what he has always been drawn to as a reader, that is what he writes.

Top customer reviews

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This is an excellent Sci-Fi story. Captain Tyler Barron and his famous war ship, Dauntless, are returning to a distant port to get much needed repairs. The crew and the Captain are heroes in the war between the Confederation and the evil Union star cluster. While in for repairs, Barron is called into a clandestine meeting and given a special assignment by the top Confederation Admiral and the head of the Confederation Secret Service.

They are tasked to travel alone into the forbidden Bad Lands where an ancient war ship is found. It is rumored to be intact and more powerful than all of the war ships involved in the war. Ancient technology that is hundreds, if not thousands, of years more advanced than the current technologies of either the Confederation or the Union capabilities. Whoever gets this ship and learns of its superior technology will not only win the war but have the power to conquer the entire galaxy. They have only translated the name of the massive ship. It is called Planet Killer and the name alone strikes fear in the hearts of all that have heard of the find.

Dauntless must make a trip into the Bad Lands and capture and control possession of the ancient ship at all costs. If not, it may mean the end of the Confederation…..

This book is full of a lot of action. Space battles and hand to hand combat on massive space ships. The tactical strategies and use of advanced technology make this book entertaining and fun to read. Jay Allan is an excellent author and I have read all of his books. This is one of his best.

If you love Sci-Fi then this is a book that you must read. I enjoyed this story and I recommend it to you.

Jay Allan is one of the best new authors for sci-fi books. I liked this book a lot and I enjoyed reading it.

Captain Tyler Barron and crew are sent for a refit to a facility at the edge of the Quarantined Zone (unofficially known as the Badlands). Knowing he will take a request from two very highly placed men as an order, they ask Captain Barron to volunteer to take the Dauntless into the Badlands to check on an ancient artifact that may be a huge weapon of the pre-Cataclysm civilization. Their mission is to see if the artifact does exist and, if so, to prevent the Union from aquiring it while waiting for reinforcements to arrive.They will have to fight against impossible odds, but this time it's for the very freedom of the human race. If the Union gets the ancient technology they will be able to subdue and enslave all nations.

And, again, the battleship CFS Dauntless is barely operational.

I give this one 5 stars. It has some of the same kind of errors as the first two, but there is a lot less of them. The errors are minor.

I have so many good series to read that sometimes I forget what each one is about. I knew that I wanted to get back to this one because it was by Jay Allan, one of my very favorite authors. He has written a ton of military science fiction and this one is just as good, if not better, than the rest. I actually have Book 4, “Echoes of Glory” and Book 5, “Cauldron of Fire”, and some how I bought them before I bought book 3. But, now I’m caught up and have some additional great reading to do.

Now on with the review of this book. We’re back with Captain Tyler Barron, commanding the CFS Dauntless. His ship and crew have just slightly recovered from their ordeal behind enemy lines where they destroyed a massive Union floating supply depot with the help of the CFS Intrepid. While there was a lull in the fighting, the war was still going on and the Confederation was just waiting for what the Union might do next. Although the Confederation believed it would take a while for the Union to amass enough forces to make a concentrated attack, they still had to stay vigilant. But, several battleships had to get refitted or they were going to fall completely apart. The CFS Dauntless was one of those.So, to the pleasant surprise of Captain Tyler Barron and his crew, they were ordered back to the shipyards on Dannith for extended repairs. Why there was something of a mystery since that particular shipyard was very far in the rear and near the “Badlands”, a sector of space where previous civilizations had existed until they destroyed each other. The Badlands was a strange and eerie place where worlds have died. Destruction was very evident all around the planets and the space in-between. These civilizations had reached a technology level far in advanced of the current humans, but it had led to their total annihilation. Very few artifacts existed in this strange place and it was forbidden for spacers to travel to this sector although that brought out the worst in humanity called scavengers. They chose to roam the Badlands scavenging bits and pieces of old tech that they sold on the blackmarket. Most of this old stuff was of no use and little more than junk. The tech was also so far advanced that most who got some didn’t know what it was or what to do with it.

Then the spaceship Pegasus found something far into the Badlands. It was a monumental fine that could change the balance of power in the galaxy. The only problem is they didn’t know how to get it back to Confederation space and even if they did, they knew the Confeds would confiscate their find and probably throw them in prison. Still, this massive find could not be ignored. Then the Union showed up using the same purchased information that Captain Andromeda Lafarge of the Pegasus had obtained. For once, Captain Lafarge put her loyalty to the Confederation ahead of her personal desires and knew that the Confederation had to get control of this massive artifact before the Union took it with them.

The only problem of the Confederation was that the Union chose this time to launch a new offensive. It couldn’t be determined initially if this was a decisive attack meant to go all out or if it was a bluff. The Confed Admiral felt that he needed every ship in the fleet available for the coming battle, but with the CFS Dauntless on it’s way to Dannith, he decided to send it into the Badlands to find out just what the Pegasus and it’s Captain had found. The odds are stacked against the Dauntless once again. It doesn’t look good for the Confederation at either the front or in the Badlands. A very exciting story unfolds. Fast paced action with lots of great reading.

I’m thinking about reading book four immediately, but I might not. I can guarantee that I will get back to this series very soon. It’s just that good. Well done Jay Allan!

In this 3rd installment of the Blood on the Stars series, Jay Allan asserts yet again his keen touch for military science fiction. The Confederation's legendary battleship Dauntless, under the helm of its veteran captain Tyler Barron, is sent on a solitary gambit into the Badlands, to investigate rumors of an ancient spaceship whose technology could tip the balance in the vicious war against the Union. With a massive Union offensive all across the frontline, Dauntless must hold its own at all costs against increasingly overwhelming odds as the Union dispatches multiple warships to secure the same prize. A breathless series of grim dogfights, stubborn battleship slugfests, and bloody boarding actions will keep most readers on the edge of their seats until the very last chapter.